I think my brother has a rare talent for photographing dogs – they tend to look rather intelligent in his pics (mind you: a cat lover is writing this;-) Dogs and landscapes… repost of Britt, the watchdog, to form a series. Also, she’s dead now.

Woah! In an hour from now, I’ll be getting my anti-tick shot – Austria is making a big effort in extincting related diseases (in particular meningitis). My German vaccination certificates booklet doesn’t contain a page for the anti-tick shot, so I wanted to download one from Zecken.at (Zecken = ticks). Didn’t find one there, but what I found was a tick screensaver. A very inclusive offer: They’ve got screen savers for PC _and_ for Mac. A tempting offer for you? Go there.

Today we had the first proper day of spring in a very early spring this year (Of course it wasn’t the REAL first day of spring – that comes on the 21st of March this year with the spring equinox). The weather was lovely and so I went for a run. The third time this year, and while I normally get outrun by at least two thirds of the runners on my usual running course (and lapped once to twice by my boyfriend on the 2km sprint route that’s part of it), I was the undisputed queen of the road today. For most of the road. It seemed as if all those people who normally wouldn’t lift a leg or finger had all of a sudden decided to change their lives and do some sports. Most of them were not even running anymore when I passed them, but the trainers and shell suit gave them away. My boyfriend was ill and therefore couldn’t come running (which probably contributed to boosting my selfesteem;-) but followed a little later on the bike to catch a bit of sunlight, too.

The running course follows a river, in which we found the base of a vacuum cleaner that had gotten stuck between the rocks. I managed to free “Topfi” (literally ‘Potty’, as we decided to call the vehicle) and followed it a good stretch down the river until it eventually got stuck again, at a spot where we couldn’t reach it. Up to that point, Topfi had been the perfect vehicle and quick as silver in the current. We forgot to take another picture, but hope that the river is going to take him to pastures new one day. FREE TOPFI!

And now we move on to a very special picture. It is on the on hand an illustration of unattainable love, and on the other hand the story of two star-crossed lovers: Lady Black from the Golden Palace and Mr. Cool, the internationally renowned miniature golfer, both trapped in their respective snow globes.

But at least they have got each other to look at now, which is much better than being the only person trapped in a snow globe.

Thanks to Florian and the Korea crowd for helping to introduce the two to each other!

Unfortunately, Lady Black is a bit of a drinker, which is why she will soon be in it (perfume, not water) just up to her neck, but I am sure we will find a solution for that.

So the Föhn wind that brightened up our weekend has gone and Dornburn is once more smothered by a thick layer of fog.

Here are some shots of Dornburn and the Rhine Valley: the first one is the shot my brother took on Saturday when we hiked up the Karren, and the other ones were spat out by the same mountain’s stationary webcam about fifteen minutes ago.

I’ve uploaded a succession of shots to show how nice the sunsets can be here – in theory, if only one managed to get beyond that thick layer of clouds. I, however, am writing to you from underneath the sad blanket…